Hollywood actor, Robert Mitchum, was full of contradictions. Always known as a bad boy, he was expelled from school, hopped freight trains at age 14, wandered the country as a depression-era hobo, was hauled onto a chain gang for vagrancy and soon escaped.
He never found a bottle of booze he couldn’t drink and a woman he couldn’t attract. Mitchum was also busted for marijuana early in his career. Much later when he was asked to tell his life story, he responded, “What do you mean my life story? I told it all to the Los Angeles Police Department.”
Mitchum also had a photographic memory, inhaled books, haunted public libraries, wrote poetry, and could recite Shakespeare by heart. He married his childhood sweetheart, Dorothy Spence, and stayed with her the rest of his life.
With little guidance and few rules, he forged his own way in the world and somehow became one of the most famous actors of his time.
He was born in 1917, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. His young parents, Ann and James Mitchum, later moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where James found a job at the Charleston navy yard. Then tragedy struck. While he was working at his job coupling and uncoupling freight train cars, James was crushed to death when the car in front of him accidentally jerked backward.
After this tragedy, Ann couldn’t seem to find her bearings. While becoming involved with the man who would be her second husband, she sent her two sons, Robert and John, to live with their grandparents on their farm in Felton, Delaware. Daughter Annette would stay with Ann. While in Felton high school, Robert met 13-year-old Dorothy Spence and instantly knew she was the one for him.
Gradually Robert’s family reunited, but they kept moving until Annette, who later relocated to Long Beach, California, induced the family to join her there.
She had joined the Players Guild, a small acting troupe, changed her name to Julie and then manipulated Robert into trying out for a part. After reading for it, he was immediately hired. He later broke into the film industry by signing on to play in the Hopalong Cassidy series.
“I was very pleased to work in the Hoppy’s,” he said. “Supper on the ground, 100 dollars a week, and all the horse manure you could carry home.”
During his lifetime, he made almost 100 movies including The Longest Day, The Night of the Hunter, and Cape Fear. He’s also remembered for his TV performances in The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. A powerful actor, he could speak volumes without saying a word.
After living almost 20 years in Los Angeles, both Robert and Dorothy were anxious to go back East, where they had grown up. At the height of his career, he was sick of all the Hollywood “phonies.” She wanted to move away from her husband’s affairs with some of Hollywood’s leading ladies. She also wanted their three children to experience a more ordinary life.
He craved privacy, and bought a 280-acre waterfront property in 1959 called Belmont Farm in Trappe, Maryland, for 140,000 dollars. He sold it in 1966. When he asked a local realtor what folks did around here, the man replied, “We don’t do nothing in these parts but go crabbing and drink.”
That suited Robert just fine. When asked if he would miss Hollywood life, he replied, “If I walked into a restaurant there, people held their breath. They just waited for me to walk up and sock someone.”
He told a Baltimore Sun newspaper reporter, “When I’m at Belmont, it’s like living in a different world. Living here means the burning of another bridge behind me.”
Belmont Farm was his refuge. It was his “lost, nostalgic, splendid isolation.” Here he could be content doing nothing. He’d fish a little, drink a lot, and admire the beautiful sunsets. He says, “I was never very social in California, and I’m not social in Maryland. But Maryland is a place I can be as unsocial as I want.”
The locals, however, didn’t always respect his privacy. Some would come to his secluded property and dig up shrubs and other plantings. He then hired Bob Gerlock, who would later become a Talbot County sheriff, to patrol the farm with his shotgun.
In her article, Robert Mitchum Slept Here, Gerlock told writer Helen Chappell that Mitchum was a nice guy.
“He treated everyone who worked for him right, but you didn’t want to cross him when he was drinking. He did have a temper,” Gerlock says. “He didn’t have a lot of time for 10-cent millionaires. “He was a regular guy, and he liked regular people even those who were rich and famous. He drove tractors and pitched hay and he loved animals. I never saw him without animals.”
Mitchum’s daughter, Petrine, a Hollywood director and writer, moved to the farm when she was 8 years old. She lived there with her brother Chris. Petrine’s other brother, James, stayed in Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.
“My fondest memories of Belmont are riding my horses through the woods and along the dirt road from Chancellor Point to the next road over,” she recalls. “It was a long sandy road through the forest on which we could gallop. Also, I loved swimming with my horses in the creek. It was so wonderful living right on the waterfront and being able to go crabbing off the pier.”
While living in Maryland, Mitchum first bought a quarter horse stallion and a broodmare. When asked about his love of horses, he said, “If you have a farm, you should have a horse, right? Before I knew it, I had 22, and I was in business.”
“Robert Mitchum added a touch of glamour to the opening day of the Timonium State Fair when he appeared with three of his quarter horses ready for competition,” the Evening Sun reported in 1961. “Wearing dark sunglasses, a red shirt, and a cowboy hat, he leaned against a fence and signed autographs.”
Whenever he went out in public, folks wanted to see him. Talbot County resident Scott Worsham remembers when the manager of the Acme market in Easton complained about the commotion that ensued when Mitchum shopped there. Women would rush over to his aisle and pull cans and boxes off the shelves just to get a look at him.
As famous as he was however, Mitchum was extremely capable of mischief. A later owner of Belmont Farm told the Star Democrat that he had heard some interesting stories about him—such as when he and Yul Brynner raced their matching Aston Martin cars down Chancellor Point Road. Robert came out fine while Brynner hit the farm’s front entrance gate.
Mitchum’s drunken behavior at the Tidewater Inn’s Decoy Bar prompted a few police calls and they had to admonish him a time or two. Rumor has it that the Cambridge Yacht Club was not as tolerant and banned him from the premises.
Meanwhile, long-suffering Dorothy was trying to find a life for herself at Belmont. One day she hosted a formal lawn party for some of the local society ladies. Robert caught wind of this and he instructed one of his workers to hide behind the barn and spy on the party.
That lovely afternoon all was going well. Mitchum even made an appearance by carrying a sterling silver tea service out to the lawn. He looked dashing in his tuxedo jacket, black tie, and dress shoes. Unfortunately, his trousers were missing and the proper ladies gasped as they viewed the movie star in his jockey shorts.
In spite of his bad-boy reputation, Mitchum’s many movie commitments often took him away for months. In 1966, Dorothy, feeling isolated and distressed about his long affair with Shirley MacLaine, decided they should sell the farm. He ended the affair because he couldn’t envision life without Dorothy, and they moved back to California. Long before his death in 1997, Mitchum remarked, “The biggest mistake of my life was selling my Eastern Shore property.”
Two years ago, Petrine was delighted to be welcomed back to Belmont by current owners, Richard and Sandy Walsh, who had just bought the house.
“They have such a great vision of restoring the farm to its former glory,” Petrine says. “The house has been maintained and upgraded over the years and stepping into my old bedroom brought back so many wonderful memories. It was like a homecoming. I’ve been putting together photos and memorabilia from the farm to give the Walshes next time I visit, which I hope will be soon.”
Further Reading
Lee Server biography Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don’t Care.
Helen Chappell Robert Mitchum Slept Here Tidewater Times January 2013
Anne McNulty is a freelance writer living in Queenstown, Maryland. Her articles have appeared in What’s Up? Media publications for more than 10 years and frequently cover life on the Eastern Shore.
